Anthropic recently paid $1.5 billion to settle a major copyright case involving pirated books. However, Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music say that the payment has not solved everything. Their new lawsuit concerns songs, lyrics, sheet music and alleged continuing copyright violations.
The publishers filed their case in a federal court in California on 28 August. They also named Anthropic CEO and co-founder Benjamin Mann as defendants. According to the filing, Anthropic has committed a “blatant violation of copyright law”.
The complaint says Anthropic illegally downloaded, scraped and torrented thousands of protected musical works. These materials allegedly helped train Claude, the company’s popular artificial intelligence model.
Sony and Warner claim collected songs from several unauthorised online sources. These allegedly included Library Genesis and the Pirate Library Mirror. The company also supposedly scraped licensed lyrics platforms, including Musixmatch and LyricFind. According to the publishers, can reproduce protected lyrics in its responses.
The listed songs include famous works from several generations. Examples include “Hallelujah”, “Uptown Funk” and “All I Want for Christmas Is You”. Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” and “Paper Rings” also appear in the complaint.
The earlier $1.5 billion settlement involved a different group of copyright owners. Authors accused Anthropic of obtaining millions of books from pirate websites. A judge found training with books could qualify as fair use. However, building a permanent library through piracy remained a separate infringement issue.
That difference explains why the earlier payment offers limited protection now. The settlement covered claims about specific books and Anthropic’s past acquisition of them. It did not purchase a general licence for every copyrighted work. It also did not settle claims belonging to unrelated music publishers.
Why $1.5 billion is not enough
Sony and Warner argue that the settlement failed to discourage Anthropic. They describe the payment as merely a business cost for the valuable company.
Their lawsuit seeks up to $150,000 for every work wilfully infringed. It also demands $25,000 for each occasion when copyright-management information was allegedly removed from protected material.
With thousands of songs involved, possible damages could reach several billion dollars. However, these are requested statutory amounts, not a final court award. The publishers must still prove ownership, copying, infringement and any claimed wilfulness.
Sony and Warner believe $1.5 billion was insufficient because their claims remain unpaid. More importantly, they allege Anthropic continued using an unlawful sourcing model. The court will now decide whether those accusations survive evidence and legal scrutiny. Its outcome may shape future deals between creators and developers.
What Anthropic says
Anthropic rejects the allegations and promises a strong defence. The company vows to defend itself “robustly”.
“This is the third lawsuit from the same lawyers, recycling allegations from cases already before the courts. Training generative AI models is a transformative fair use — as the court held in [a previous case] — and we will defend ourselves robustly,” Anthropic said in a statement.
The dispute concerns more than whether machines may learn from creative works. Courts must also examine where the training material came from. They must decide whether outputs reproduce protected expressions too closely. Licensing agreements and website conditions could further influence the result.
